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In China’s interior, renewable energy sometimes produces more electricity than nearby consumers can use, but other times it produces very little. Just five years ago, three inland regions – sparsely populated Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Gansu – created abundant solar and wind power. waste of up to two-fifths this is your strength.
To solve this problem, China has built ultra-high-voltage transmission lines that connect the interior of the country to centers near the coast. But the connection still has a long way to go. If transmission networks are expanded, “new demand could be met by cleaner energy sources,” Ms Lewis said.
Beijing is also trying to use market forces to expand renewable energy. The Chinese government has ordered power companies to charge industrial and commercial customers five times more than when power is scarce and renewable energy produced mainly by coal flows into the grid.
Despite Beijing’s aims, state governments have other ideas.
“There’s a tug-of-war right now,” said Kelly Sims Gallagher, a professor who studies China’s climate policy at the Fletcher School of Tufts University. “The central government is trying to limit coal production and local governments are doing the opposite. They want to restart factories or build new ones to reactivate their local economies post-pandemic.”
Song Hewan, a bicycle mechanic who works and lives near the new gas-fired power plant being built at the northern end of Dongguan, said he certainly didn’t miss the coal plant. “The clothes get dirty if you hang them outside, white cars get dirty after you park them here for a while,” he said.
After this experience, Mr. Song is not enthusiastic about power plants in general. But he fears China’s four decades of rapid economic growth may come to an end if a new power plant does not replace the demolished coal-fired power plant. “Without electricity,” he said, “life would go back to the Seventies.”
Keith Bradsher Reported from Dongguan, China and Lisa Friedman Reported from Washington. joyful contributed to research.
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